his paunch, to his whole repulsive appearance.  Greater than Madame because of his sex, he had achieved a triumph over the corporeal mass of his body which she, fortified and abetted by a hundred cosmetics and manipulations, could never attain.  Where Madame relied on futile artificial aids in her battle against decay, he hurled the tremendous power of his personality, and ugliness became at once as insignificant as immorality in his life.  “One can’t judge him by the standards of other men,” thought Gabriella, using a remembered phrase of Fifty-seventh Street.

Judge Crowborough was still talking earnestly into the telephone, and she gathered vaguely that his earnestness related to a donation he had promised his church.  “Raise two hundred thousand, and I’ll double it,” he said abruptly, and hung up the receiver.  “We want a new organ—­something really fine, you know,” he observed casually as he turned back to Gabriella.  “We are moving—­everything is moving up, and the church has to keep step with the age.  You can’t keep progress out of religion any more than you can out of business—­not that I’m in favour of modernism or any of that stuff—­but we’ve got to keep moving.”  He spoke with conviction, and there was no doubt that he sincerely believed himself to be an important factor in the religious movement of his country.  Then his tone changed to one of intimate friendliness and he asked:  “Have you heard any music this winter?  If I’d only known about you, I’d have sent you tickets to the opera.”

“The children go sometimes,” she answered.  That he should imagine her buying opera tickets for herself, with the children needing every penny she made, seemed to her ridiculous; but rich men were always like that, she reflected a little scornfully.

“If I’d only remembered about you,” he murmured, and turning heavily in his chair, he added authoritatively:  “Now tell me about it.  Tell me the whole thing straight through.  I am going to help you.”

She told him rapidly, and while she talked a sense of perfect peace and security enveloped her.  It was so long since she had been able to ask advice of a man; it was so long since anybody bigger and stronger than she had undertaken to adjust her perplexities.  The past returned to her as a dream, and she felt again that absolute reliance on the masculine ability to control events, to ease burdens, to remove difficulties, which had visited her in her childhood when Cousin Jimmy appeared in the front parlour in Hill Street.  “It’s wonderful how men manage things,” she thought.  “It’s wonderful being a man.  Everything is so simple for men.”

“Well, don’t worry a minute longer.  It’s all as easy as—­as possible,” observed the great man serenely when she had finished.  “From what you tell me it looks as if it were a pretty good investment to begin with, and there are plenty of people around looking for ways to invest money.  I’m looking for ways myself, when it comes to that,” he proclaimed, with a paternal smile as he sank back on the luxurious leather cushions of his chair.